The beauty of San Sebastian city lying in the midst of a complete geography, huddled by two mountains and a beach, around a river estuary in the edge of which The Kursaal Auditorium now stands, seemingly belonging to the surrounding landscape. The Kursaal site still has the flavor of the geography and Rafael Moneo proposed to erect a building that would not violate the presence of the river in the city, raising two gigantic rocks lying on the tidal wash where the river meets the sea.

One addresses Mount Urgull which protects the Concha beach. The other looks toward Mount Ulía, a further promontory, which defines the city borders. The building does not belong to the urban fabric, but it belongs to the landscape. The auditorium and the congress hall, the key programmatic elements of the scheme, are conceived as separate autonomous volumes, as two gigantic rocks stranded at the mouth of the river forming part of the landscape rather than belonging to the city.

The first “stranded rock” that contains the auditorium measures approximately 60×48x27 meters and celebrates its character of quasi-geographical accident with a slight inclination towards the sea. The volume of the 1,880 seats auditorium is inscribed asymmetrically inside the glass prism, seeming to float within it. The asymmetry is oriented in such a way that a visitor entering the foyer is unconsciously led towards the highest level where Mount Urgull and the sea in its entire splendor can be contemplated from a singular window.

This window punctures the building’s double wall, composed of a steel skeleton clad inside and out with special, translucent planes of the curved glass facades, through which one guesses the dark volumes of the auditorium and congress room. The result is a neutral and luminous interior space whose only contact with the outside world is through the foyer window. On entering the complex, one is caught between the warm glow of cedar wood and the rippled light of the outer skin, and then led to the one window revealing the spectacle of mountains and sea.

Outside, the glass surfaces protect against salt-laden winds from the sea, making the volume dense and opaque. Yet The Kursaal Auditorium appears frozen mass during the day and is set mysterious and dazzling source of light by night, a beacon of coexistence between the natural landscape and the artificial world of the city. Similar design and structural criteria have been used in planning the smaller congress hall, the second “stranded rock”, which is also inscribed in an inclined prism measuring 42×36x24 meters.

The asymmetry here is less evident, but the view from the foyer of Mount Ulía and the sea in the background is just as spectacular. The complementary program for the celebration of congresses as well as the exhibition hall, offices and parking for 500 vehicles is placed in the levels below grade, respecting the perimeter and making use of interstitial spaces. All other facilities: the exhibition halls, meeting rooms, offices, a restaurant, and musicians’ services, are located in the platform, the base that gives due importance to the cubic volumes.

The prefabricated slate slabs platform holds all the other elements of the program. From the platform people will enjoy wonderful views of the ocean, also provides the entrance and integration with city life. It was not an analysis of the site, more a synthetic view of it that brought about the architectural solution.

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